Page 41 of Christmas with Three Firemen

The fuel tank didn’t go. The door came off before it had to. The driver is in the ambulance, and Mateo is walking back toward the engine already unzipping his jacket and saying something to Wes that makes Wes’s mouth twitch.

My hands are still shaking.

I put them in my pockets and walk back to the station.

***

The crew comes back forty minutes later.

I’m at the kitchen table when the bay doors open, back in my chair with my laptop in front of me and no memory of what I’ve been looking at for the last forty minutes. The noise of the station refilling moves through the building the way it always does, boots and voices and gear being handled, and I keep my eyes on the screen.

The bay empties gradually.

Showers. Reports. Kowalski heading for the kitchen. Rico’s voice carrying down the hallway.

I close my laptop.

The equipment room is at the far end of the bay, past the second engine. The door is open, and the light is on, and Mateo is in there going through his gear with the systematic attention of someone who has found a task and intends to stay with it.

The gear doesn’t need checking. He just came off a call. Everything was working twenty minutes ago. We both know that.

I lean in the doorway.

“Hey,” I say.

He spins around. Whatever he expected to find in the doorway, it isn’t me, and for a second his face does something unguarded before he gets it back under control.

“What are you doing down here?” he asks.

I look around the room like the answer might be written on the walls somewhere. “I don’t know,” I say. “I was at the perimeter,” I say, changing the topic. “During the call.”

He stares at me. “It was minus four out there with the wind chill.”

“I know.”

“Noelle.”

“I had to see it for myself. I needed to know everyone got out okay.”

Something moves across his face. Not quite surprise. More like he wasn’t expecting that specific honesty.

“You could have asked when we got back,” he says.

“I know.”

He exhales. “Something could have happened to you out there. Last thing we need is a double emergency.”

“I left after the driver was out,” I tell him. “I watched them get him to the ambulance, and then I walked back.”

He’s quiet for a moment. “He was scared,” he says finally. “The driver. He kept saying he couldn’t feel his legs. Turned out it was just the cold, but he didn’t know that.” He looks at his hands. “I just talked to him. Kept telling him we had him. That’s all you can do sometimes.”

“You were holding his hand,” I say.

“Yeah.”

“You weren’t going to let go.”

“No,” he says. “I wasn’t.”